It's not that canon is "not to be questioned," it's just that the word means the exact opposite of personal preference. Canon is the current official portrayal of the continuity, the version presented by the current creator(s) of the core work in the franchise. It may be subject to change as the creators refine their thinking over time or as new creators take over from old ones, but what comes from the creators is canon. That's not a value judgment, merely a description. The individual can certainly have a personal preference to interpret the continuity differently, but that has no bearing on what constitutes canon, any more than a person choosing to move to Latvia has a bearing on what constitutes the United States of America. The canon is not a dogma that fans are required to obey or a perfectly consistent whole or a measure of quality or correctness or any of the other ludicrous superstitions that fans imbue the word with. It's just the stuff the creators come up with as distinct from the stuff other people come up with.

Logically, no. ENT is common to both universes, by definition, since Nero's incursion occurred decades after it took place.

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Quite frankly, let canon be disgraced on this one, but Enterprise really had nothing to do with TOS. Even before the 2009 movie came out, when I was watching it on DVD I was finding it hard to believe that Starfleet ships of the 2150's could look so much like their counterparts of the 2360's, instead of the 2260's. So, in terms of design, and don't try to tell me that it's because TOS was based on 1960's assumptions, compared to TNG's 1980's/90's assumptions, I also felt like the producers of Enterprise were trying to shove TOS out the airlock, and say that between Enterprise and TNG, we don't know what happned.

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But TOS *was* made in the 1960's, and set and ship design can be changed as easily as an actor is recast. They have nothing to do with the story. Kirk is William Shatner and Chris Pine. The Enterprise is the Enterprise whether it looks as it did in 1966 or 2009. A Romulan Bird of Prey is the same whether it looks as it did in "Minefield" or "Balance of Terror"
Read my longer post HERE on the subject of visual continuity.

So design wise, the 2009 movie looks like it belongs in the same universe as Enterprise. Plus, storywise, it doesn't jar you with annoying continuity questions like 'If humans had already met the Ferengi, then why did they not recognize them from the history tapes in "The Last Outpost", even though they had no name attached to them?'

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Unrecorded (for whatever vague reason) first contacts have happened in Trek before - Robert April and George Kirk learned the Romulans' secret in Diane Carey's Final Frontier, the Borg's initial encounter was rewritten in Voyager and Enterprise (and at least one TOS comic)
And it's not like pre-Enterprise continuity was flawless. Trek is entertainment first and foremost. TNG wasn't too bothered to pretend the earlier comment about Romulans having not been seen or heard from in 50 years ("The Neutral Zone") never happened when they wrote about a huge Romulan incident 22 years ago ("Yesterday's Enterprise") and Voyager merrily slowed warp speeds down to suit it's core plotline, making TOS' galaxy-crossing journies (and thus the events of several episodes and one movie) impossible.

I do wonder what the TOS Enterprise would have looked like had it been the ship destroyed in the opening scene of ST XI (as was the plan, before Abrams was told that it was strictly forbidden to destroy an Enterprise) instead of the Kelvin.

I do wonder what the TOS Enterprise would have looked like had it been the ship destroyed in the opening scene of ST XI (as was the plan, before Abrams was told that it was strictly forbidden to destroy an Enterprise) instead of the Kelvin.

But TOS *was* made in the 1960's, and set and ship design can be changed as easily as an actor is recast.

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Right. The TOS ship didn't look the way it did because it was exactly what the creators wanted, but because it was the best approximation of future technology that they could manage with the limited time, budget, and resources at their disposal. That's why they changed the look so radically for Phase II/TMP -- because by then they had the budget and tech to make it more sophisticated. Same with the makeup. When TMP came out and showed us ridged Klingons, Roddenberry explicitly told fans to accept that Klingons had always looked like that, but TOS simply hadn't been able to show it. His own view was that what we saw was just a modern attempt to approximate a conjectural future, and that fans shouldn't take its every detail literally.

Unrecorded (for whatever vague reason) first contacts have happened in Trek before - Robert April and George Kirk learned the Romulans' secret in Diane Carey's Final Frontier, the Borg's initial encounter was rewritten in Voyager and Enterprise (and at least one TOS comic)

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Not to mention in real life. Europeans first settled North America in 1000 CE, the Norse colony of Vinland. The Vinlanders and indigenous peoples interacted, traded, and fought for years before the colony was abandoned. And then it was completely forgotten about, so that when Columbus stumbled upon North America nearly 500 years later, it was believed for centuries to be the "first contact" between Europe and the Americas.

I do wonder what the TOS Enterprise would have looked like had it been the ship destroyed in the opening scene of ST XI (as was the plan, before Abrams was told that it was strictly forbidden to destroy an Enterprise) instead of the Kelvin.

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Probably much like the Kelvin did, interior-wise -- suggestive of the overall look and flavor of TOS design, but considerably more modern and detailed. After all, the film was targeted mainly at creating a new audience for Star Trek, bringing in moviegoers who weren't already devoted fans. And winning over modern moviegoers would require giving the film a modern look. Not to mention that the feature film screen, just by virtue of its size and resolution, demands more detailed set design than the small, mediocre-definition TV screens that TOS was made for. Basically, TV design back then was more impressionistic, more about the broad strokes than the details. So a more detailed, technically advanced design that captures the same overall aesthetic is a valid way to recreate it.

It would be good if these novels continued to after the point Romulus was destroyed. Would make a very interesting read.

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I don't see any reason to think they won't. At this point it's only 2 or 3 years away depending on where the Cold Equations trilogy ends, and, ATM at least, they aren't showing any signs of slowing down.

I do wonder what the TOS Enterprise would have looked like had it been the ship destroyed in the opening scene of ST XI (as was the plan, before Abrams was told that it was strictly forbidden to destroy an Enterprise) instead of the Kelvin.

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I'd never heard that before. I wonder if they had done this, would they have spared Vulcan? I would have thought that offing both the ENT and Vulcan in one movie might have been a bit too much for our heads.

Do you have a link to this? Not that I don't believe you, I'd just be interested in reading more about this plan.